Chris Nichols

PolitiFact Reporter

For the past dozen years, Chris Nichols has worked as a government and politics reporter at newspapers across California. Most recently, he covered the Capitol for the San Diego Union-Tribune. Previously, he worked at the North County Times in Escondido; the Lodi News-Sentinel and the Sonora Union-Democrat.

He is a native of sunny San Diego and long-suffering fan of the San Diego Padres and Chargers – but only if they stay in America’s Finest City. After obtaining his bachelor’s degree from UC Berkeley, Chris left California to earn his master’s degree from the Columbia Graduate School of Journalism in 2004, but quickly returned home after realizing his heart was in the Golden State, not the Big Apple.

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Stories by Chris Nichols

Eye-opening claims that California has the sixth largest economy on the planet, the highest poverty rate in the nation and that President Trump’s border wall will cost one and a half times as much as an aircraft carrier.

There are many Democrats in Congress that describe the GOP tax plan as a scheme to benefit the wealthy at the expense of the middle class, and House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi was the latest Democrat to lodge a comparable criticism of the bill.

Candidate for California governor Delaine Eastin bills herself as the education candidate. She's claimed in recent months that California has failed to prioritize college construction in favor of prisons. We check in on one of those claims.

Republican George Runner predicted in April that California’s gas tax hike would catapult the state's already high fuel prices to the "highest in the nation," after the increase went into effect on Nov. 1. It appears his prediction was spot on.

Two separate campaigns are seeking to repeal California's controversial gas tax increase. How are the repeal efforts different, and will they help or hurt each other as they try to make it on the November 2018 ballot?